Daily photos no. 74:a weekend in the country

For my mother's 70th back in 2013 (she's still with us: she recently asked me why I wasn't on WhatsApp - 'I'm in a group with some nuns, it's great') we hired a big house and chef in the Cotswolds, not an area I know well at all. The house was beautiful and, being owned by English toffs, had been the subject of a vicious legal dispute which had reached the gossip pages of a certain nasty-minded, mid-market tabloid. Which made it all the more enjoyable.

Obviously the Cotswolds is renowned for its natural beauty, the honeyed stone, the rolling countryside and its infestation by the worst of the British élite: Bullingdon Club Prime Ministers, retired bass player cheesemakers, phone hackers and underling-beaters, but it's also a former industrial zone - these parasites have hoovered up the hovels and bothies of the weavers and labourers from the first days of the industrial revolution. I vaguely remember reading a report from the inevitable think-tank proposing that the West Midlands, Liverpool and other post-industrial zones should be allowed to wither on the vine because they'd eventually be reclaimed by nature and second-home owners as bucolic retreats…without mentioning the mass emigration and class replacement  that turned Stroud and places like it from factory hellholes to chic boltholes.

Anyway, I had a lovely weekend there, admiring the view and plotting revolution.

Brother-in-law 1 making a bid for Athena poster stardom